The heart of a computer's long term memory is an assembly that is referred to as a magnetic disk drive. The magnetic disk drive includes a rotating magnetic disk, write and read heads that are suspended by a suspension arm adjacent to a surface of the rotating magnetic disk and an actuator that swings the suspension arm to place the read and write heads over selected circular tracks on the rotating disk. The read and write heads are directly located on a slider that has an air bearing surface (ABS). The suspension arm biases the slider toward the surface of the disk and when the disk rotates, air adjacent to the surface of the disk moves along with the disk. The slider flies on this moving air at a very low elevation (fly height) over the surface of the disk. This fly height is on the order of nanometers. When the slider rides on the air bearing, the write and read heads are employed for writing magnetic transitions to and reading magnetic transitions from the rotating disk. The read and write heads are connected to processing circuitry that operates according to a computer program to implement the writing and reading functions.
A common write head configuration includes a coil layer embedded in first, second and third insulation layers (insulation stack), the insulation stack being sandwiched between first and second pole piece layers. A gap is formed between the first and second pole piece layers by a gap layer at an air bearing surface (ABS) of the write head and the pole piece layers are connected at a back gap. Current conducted to the coil layer induces a magnetic flux in the pole pieces which causes a magnetic field to fringe out at a write gap at the ABS for the purpose of writing the aforementioned magnetic impressions in tracks on the moving media, such as in circular tracks on the aforementioned rotating disk.
In recent read head designs a spin valve sensor, also referred to as a giant magnetoresistive (GMR) sensor, has been employed for sensing magnetic fields from the rotating magnetic disk. This sensor includes a nonmagnetic conductive layer, hereinafter referred to as a spacer layer, sandwiched between first and second ferromagnetic layers, hereinafter referred to as a pinned layer and a free layer. First and second leads are connected to the spin valve sensor for conducting a sense current therethrough. The magnetization of the pinned layer is pinned perpendicular to the air bearing surface (ABS) and the magnetic moment of the free layer is biased parallel to the ABS, but is free to rotate in response to external magnetic fields. The magnetization of the pinned layer is typically pinned by exchange coupling with an antiferromagnetic layer.
The thickness of the spacer layer is chosen to be less than the mean free path of conduction electrons through the sensor. With this arrangement, a portion of the conduction electrons is scattered by the interfaces of the spacer layer with each of the pinned and free layers. When the magnetizations of the pinned and free layers are parallel with respect to one another, scattering is minimal and when the magnetizations of the pinned and free layer are antiparallel, scattering is maximized. Changes in scattering alter the resistance of the spin valve sensor in proportion to cos θ, where θ is the angle between the magnetizations of the pinned and free layers. In a read mode the resistance of the spin valve sensor changes proportionally to the magnitudes of the magnetic fields from the rotating disk. When a sense current is conducted through the spin valve sensor, resistance changes cause potential changes that are detected and processed as playback signals.
Conventional magnetic recording head sliders are typically made from wafers of a two-phase ceramic, TiC/Al2O3, also called Al—TiC. After the thin film processing to prepare the recording heads is performed on the Al—TiC wafers, the sliders are then formed. The sliders are fabricated by cutting, grinding and lapping the wafer made of the above material. This involves a series of shaping and polishing operations, and also the formation of an air bearing, usually using dry etching.
More particularly, once the read sensor and write element are formed on the wafer (usually thousands of such sensors and write elements being formed on a single wafer) the wafer is sliced into rows. This has traditionally been performed by a saw. As can be appreciated, such saw blades can only be made so thin, and as a result a significant amount of the wafer is wasted as unused kerf region to accommodate the width of the saw cut between each row. Since the price margins for the production of magnetic sliders is very tight, manufactures must produce as many usable sliders as possible from each wafer. This slider yield is a function of both the number of sliders that can be fit onto a single wafer as well as the percentage of useable sliders that can pass inspection once manufacturing is complete. Therefore, since the sawing of wafers into rows consumes a large percentage of the wafer as unusable kerf region, such sawing reduces yield and increases the cost of a slider.
After the wafer has been parsed into individual rows, the air bearing surface is then lapped to remove sufficient material to allow the magnetic sensor to have a desired stripe height and to allow the write element to have the desired throat height. Various patterning and etching processes are then performed to configure the air bearing surface with a desired air bearing surface shape designed for optimal aerodynamic characteristics. This surface shape usually includes at least one pad located at a trailing edge of the slider and two or more pads and other shapes located closer to the leading edge of the slider. These distribute high pressure regions to desired locations on the air bearing surface in order to define a low, stable fly-height. The rows are then sliced into individual sliders by cutting in a direction perpendicular to the direction used to cut the wafers into rows.
As mentioned above, the wafer have substrates typically been constructed of TiC in an alumina matrix Al2O3. It turns out that Al—TiC is not the ideal material for use in a slider. Al—TiC is an extremely hard material and can be prone to causing media damage during head disk contact. A softer material with high thermal conductivity, such as Si has been found to provide better characteristics for use as a slider body and causes less damage to the media during a head disk contact.
Although not the ideal material for use as a slider body, the use of this very hard, tough Al—TiC material has been necessitated partially by the use of the above described sawing of the wafer into rows. The sawing operation used to cut the wafer into rows creates very high stresses on the wafer material. If this sawing operation is used on a comparatively less tough material such as Si, the stress on the wafer material during the sawing operation causes chipping and cracking in the rows. Some of these cracks may be propagated at some later point, including during operation in the disk drive. Also, chipping or cracking at the ABS results in an unacceptable change in flying characteristics, thereby making diamond saw cutting an undesirable process for making Si rows.
U.S Patent Publication US2002/0145827 A1, published on Oct. 10, 2002 by Bunch et al. teaches a method for manufacturing sliders from a silicon wafer using a deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) technique. The DRIE technique used results in a cut that is wider at the bottom of the cut than at the top of the cut. The wedge angle can cause some problems with handling the sliders and with lapping and other manufacturing steps. The use of DRIE also requires the use of expensive tooling since each DRIE tool costs up to one million dollars and has very low wafer throughput.
There is therefore, a strong felt need for a manufacturing method that can be used to parse a wafer into rows without the resulting stress induced fracturing exhibited by the prior art sawing practice. There is also a strong felt need for a method for parsing a wafer into rows with minimal material loss of wafer real estate (ie. with a minimal cut thickness). Preferably such method would allow the use of a wafer constructed of a material such as Si rather than TiC, since Si sliders have the potential for improved slider performance and economics.